In which we say goodbye to Rachel Burstein, our Academic Director, as she pursues opportunities closer to home (and her young child) in California. Rachel wrote frequently about the program on this blog, and in other venues. In this post, she reflects on special aspects of the Books@Work experience. Please join us in thanking Rachel for her powerful contributions to the growth and development of Books@Work, and encouraging her to keep in touch.

Reading, writing and discussing poetry has the power to open windows in life-changing ways, giving readers the freedom to tell their own stories and view themselves as capable learners and contributors. Our current partnership with the East Cleveland Municipal Court and From Lemons to Lemonade (FL2L) bring Books@Work to a group of single mothers and other women whose lives rarely afford them the opportunity to read, let alone reflect.

In just seven pages of text, Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges raises profound questions about the meaning and value of knowledge in his 1941 essay, “The Library of Babel”: the timelessness of knowledge, its organization, the identity of its stewards and its accessibility. In this installment of “A Text at Work” we invite you to read Borges’ essay, consider the questions posed by Professor Peter Haas in a recent Books@Work seminar, and contribute to the conversation in the comments section.

Last month Books@Work organized a gathering for Cleveland-area college and university professors who have taught, are teaching or plan to teach in Books@Work seminars graciously hosted by Case Western Reserve University’s Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, a major hub of humanities activity in the Northeast Ohio region. Along with an opportunity to socialize, attendees were introduced to the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, a prestigious prize awarded to literature that confronts racism and celebrates diversity. We look forward to many opportunities to deepen our partnership with the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and with the Baker-Nord Center in the coming year.

Context is important in understanding works of literature. But readers of literature — particularly those in Books@Work seminars — are not only historians. They read for all sorts of reasons. To hear stories. To encounter the other. To understand the world around them. To hear the beauty of the written word. To escape the familiar. To embrace the familiar. And so even as we acknowledge, unpack and rethink the meaning of works like Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum in light of the author’s past and how he concealed that past, we also continue to read. As you read, how much does the author’s past affect how you perceive the story?

The festivities surrounding National Poetry Month reminds us that poems can speak to us in ways that few other things can, capturing fleeting moments or complicated emotions on their own terms. A first encounter with a poem can be difficult. But like so much in reading, peeling back the layers of the text to see new things reveals new meanings and new ways of seeing the world. Tight and taut, the poem invites scrutiny, gives space for reading and re-reading, encourages self-examination alongside reading, urges engagement — also the hallmark of the Books@Work learning experience.

In this article for the Carnegie Council’s magazine, Policy Innovations, we argue that literature—whether a classic play or a contemporary novel—has everything to do with work. And given the chance to read and discuss books in seminars led by university professors, employees will make those connections explicit.

News came last week that the famed literary editor Leon Wieseltier was joining the Brookings Institution, the venerable Washington, DC think tank as the Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and Policy. The announcement shows that policy work isn’t just the domain of social scientists. Whether they involve parsing texts or reflecting on the historical significance of cultural trends, the methodologies employed by humanities scholars such as Wieseltier are rigorous and important and offer a new way of understanding current problems.

Last Friday was Employee Appreciation Day. Employee Appreciation Day is a nice start, but if it is to make a difference in employee engagement and loyalty, that day must be the start of something bigger — something that makes employees feel valued as contributors, partners and people every day of the year.

There is something compelling and enduring (even if not literally!) about the paperback. It is the affordable, reliable, available book for the everyman. While serialized literature was a feature of nineteenth century newspapers, and while the concept of the free public (and sometimes lending) library dates to even earlier, the mass availability of serious literature in book format largely came with the advent of the paperback.